Game of Thrones Season 2

[evilgoodwin]

Originally Posted by Tel Prydain

Slight S02E10 Spoilers....


I just had one of the most confusing conversations I've ever had, trying to explain the difference between a Wight and White Walker.

So north of the wall there are two types of supernatural baddie, right?
Wights - undead zombie people
The White Walkers - White skinned humanoids that control the wights and wield icey weapons.
Easy. Clearly different creatures. And Wights are common in fantasy fiction - if you've played Warcraft, D&D or Heroes of Might and Magic, you've run into them before.

Obviously in the books the White Walkers have two names; anyone south of the wall calls them The Others, but the Wildlings north of the wall call them the White Walkers.
It appears that, to reduce confusion, they tried to use JUST White Walkers in the TV show.
One is because in the book you have a capital O to denote you're talking about a special group, rather than just some random group of others ("The others are coming soon" vs "The Others are coming soon.")
Secondly, why use two names when you can use one?
The last reason is there were already 'others' on Lost and they didn't want people getting confused.

This attempt to simplify things didn't work for three reasons.
1. I am 98% sure I've heard White Walkers referred as the Others in the show, although only rarely in the first series. Early drafts of the script maintained the naming dichotomy, so it's possible that some old dialogue referring to 'The Others' snuck through. The rare mention of ‘the Others’ isn’t enough to let you know that the White Walkers and the Others are the definitely the same things.
2. I’m not sure that there was any explicit comments to underline that the wights were NOT the White Walkers. So you’ve got two monsters (one type seen, the other seen mostly as a fleeting Shadow. Then you have three names, only one of which is explicitly attached to a specific monster.)
3. Most importantly, when spoken aloud, Wight sounds almost exactly the same as White.

Number three provided a five minute, agonising conversation with someone who had never read the books. Any point in the series where someone had said, "Wights are coming" or "We have the head of a Wight"; he'd heard "Whites are coming" or "We have the head of a White".

Once I'd finally managed to establish that White and Wight were different words, I then struggled to convey the relationship... I desperately tried to explain that there are no wight walkers, there are wights and white walkers. And the wights serve the whites.
It also didn't help that in the last shot of series 2, the White Walkers ride wight horses instead of walking. While the wights, walk. Basically, the White Walker is walking the Wights to war.

Just calling them The Others doesn't seem so bad now, eh?

I stick to this:

They called the Others the White Walkers, not understanding there was a difference. But in reality, they White Walkers are what you saw at the end of Season 2. And the White Walkers, are more or less, Wights, which in fantasy, are a type of undead who are immensely powerful and capable of sentient thought beyond everything else. The Others are what they should be calling the Zombies, though Others can easily refer to as White Walkers. My memory is fuzzy, but the reanimated Black Cloaks are not the same as Others or White Walkers. I think the show, on purpose, referred to the zombie dudes as White Walkers to show the ignorance in having no idea about what was actually beyond the wall. For effect, they call the reanimated corpses White Walkers because they can not imagine something worse than that existing beyond the wall. And then when the actual White Walkers show up, the audience realizes "Oh shit, THAT'S an actual White Walker and the people on the Wall weren't even close."

But that's just my theory.

[Narradisall]

Now back to our regular scheduled bitching about morality in the show.

[LongStepMantis]

Every character is an amalgamation of good and evil. No one falls squarely into one camp but not the other. Except Joffrey, and maybe 99% of Circe. They are the biggest "camp evil" characters so far. There are plenty of other people who murder, backstab, and generally act like evil cocks at times, but no one else seems to enjoy it like they do. For fuck's sake, even the Hound and Jaime come across as sympathetic and likable compared to them.

Camp "good" is a ghost town. Some characters visit, but none of them stay. Robb and Jon have seasonal homes there, but even they aren't allowed permanent residence. Sometimes Tyrion spends Spring Break there.

Is Dany as bad as many characters? No. Is she responsible for atrocities, rapes, and murders? Only a couple directly, but there's a lot to be said for her fairy tale romance with the murderous barbarian rapist. She's simply too naive or ignorant to realize she fucks people over. Also, she burned a chick alive. Did the witch deserve it? Kind of, but what would you do if in her shoes? Why wouldn't you take the opportunity to get revenge on the people who raped and slaughtered your whole fucking way of life? Dany trusted her? Is she insane? Dany may not have directly caused that explosive chain of events, but she poured the gasoline and lit the match. Literally and figuratively.

Robert was like King Medieval Drunk Santa Claus in the way he acted at the point when the show starts, but he was still a ruthless warrior at heart and responsible for many deaths and wrongs. Of course he isn't good, he was just a tiny bit less bad than the alternatives.

tldr; Every character sucks and people die, sometimes they suck less and less people die. That's as "good" as anyone gets.

Morality observations and why they don't apply aside, great ending, pumped for Season 3!

[LordDon]

Originally Posted by bean

Murdering children is a problem for me. It's when I stopped pitying and worrying about Theon too.

However, Martin still does get me rooting for Jamie after (small spoiler as I'll be vague):

Birgetta's example of true knighthood makes him examine his choices and regret his loss of honor. I don't find myself LIKING him after this, but I do root for him as he makes choices to be a behave more honorably.

My opinion on Jamie turned around

when he goes back to Harrenhall to save Brienne from the bearpit, if I'm remembering times and locations correctly.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by LongStepMantis

Every character is an amalgamation of good and evil. No one falls squarely into one camp but not the other. Except Joffrey, and maybe 99% of Circe. They are the biggest "camp evil" characters so far. There are plenty of other people who murder, backstab, and generally act like evil cocks at times, but no one else seems to enjoy it like they do.

Gregor Clegane.

Camp "good" is a ghost town. Some characters visit, but none of them stay. Robb and Jon have seasonal homes there, but even they aren't allowed permanent residence. Sometimes Tyrion spends Spring Break there.

Ned Stark was mayor.

[Xerxes]

Ned was a fucking saint and looked what it got him. :/

Bran next in line to be a good guy? With his crippled legs?

[Primus]

Exactly. Ned was a prideful knight. Ultimately his chivalrous hubris was his demise.

[LongStepMantis]

Originally Posted by Ink Asylum

Gregor Clegane.



Ned Stark was mayor.

I thought about both of them when making examples. Gregor is hardly even a character so much as a prop, so I didn't count him towards anything. He's obviously a terrible person, but he's just so left out of the stories that I can't say much about him. Ned, well, I wanted to include Ned in camp good, but he beheads a guy in the first episode for deserting the Wall because he was scared of White Walkers. I'm not saying a deserter is innocent, far from it, but killing him outright for it is kind of an asshole thing to do, especially since he wasn't lying. Plus, wasn't he a bloodthirsty warrior in the past? Like Robert, he doesn't get a pass just because he's a little less violent in his older age. That's how I see it anyways. Even good ole' Ned has a blood-stained past. Also, he's dead as shit now, so I figured why bother discussing him.

[LongStepMantis]

Originally Posted by Xerxes

Ned was a fucking saint and looked what it got him. :/

Bran next in line to be a good guy? With his crippled legs?

I also wanted to include Bran in camp good, but so far his impact on the story, aside from his dream visions, has been completely negligible. I'm sure that will change, but I've never read the books. For all I know, maybe he becomes a rampant prostitute murderer in a few years. Like Gregor Clegane, I simply don't know enough about the guy aside from what we've seen to think much of anything about him. I only know about Ned's past because of what people on the show have mentioned.

[Ink Asylum]

There's a big debate to be had over whether executing someone who willingly broke a law that is known to be punishable by death is an asshole thing to do. There's a reason for the law, after all.

Also, was Ned bloodthirsty during the war? He fought in a war, but that doesn't make every soldier "bloodthirsty."

[LongStepMantis]

This is where those of you who have read the books have to help me. Because people talk about Ned being a natural born killer in his youth, but I only know what I've seen in the show.

[Bone]

Ned was always a warrior, but all accounts are that he was an honorable one.

Look how well he did against Jaime, the realm's best fighter and considerable younger, in the show! They were well matched.

[Tel Prydain]

Originally Posted by Narradisall

Now back to our regular scheduled bitching about morality in the show.

Oh, come on… The book’s author and the show’s producers have all said that the idea is that there are no heroes or villains, just people with human motivations. So any discussion is really about each viewer’s personal moral standards – not the morals (or lack thereof) of the characters.

Besides, try saying: “The white wights walking were not white walkers, and the white walker was not walking nor a wight” five times fast!

[LongStepMantis]

Well, consider me misinformed. I was under the assumption he was the Jaime of his generation, with a kill streak to match. I knew that he was just that, skill-wise, from their confrontation in the streets. It explained why Jaime was so pissed that someone else stepped in.

Ok, well if Ned was as good as he seemed throughout, then he would be the Mayor of camp good. Or at least he would be, if he wasn't dead.

[Tel Prydain]

Originally Posted by LongStepMantis

Ok, well if Ned was as good as he seemed throughout, then he would be the Mayor of camp good. Or at least he would be, if he wasn't dead.

It’s tempting to see him that way but, as Primus said, in the context of this world his honour was a form of hubris. There is a fine line between honourable and wilfully ignorant, and Ned put his daughters in harm’s way when he chose honour over his family’s safety.
In this world strict adherence to honour can be immoral and true morality demands a certain level of pragmatism.

[LongStepMantis]

Originally Posted by Tel Prydain

It’s tempting to see him that way but, as Primus said, in the context of this world his honour was a form of hubris. There is a fine line between honourable and wilfully ignorant, and Ned put his daughters in harm’s way when he chose honour over his family’s safety.
In this world strict adherence to honour can be immoral and true morality demands a certain level of pragmatism.

Oh I definitely agree that his rigid adherence to being "honorable" is what caused both his death and his family's ongoing plight (with some fine help from his wife, thanks Cat) but as Zoey said in Serenity "You know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed." In their world, and the real world, being too good can often cause more problems than it helps. Especially when much of the rest of the world, theirs and ours, couldn't give a flying fuck about honor. His decision to warn Circe that he knew of her twincestous ways combined with his decision to not tell Robert what he knew, so as not to bring him grief as he was dying, were the last two nails in his coffin. I'm completely on board the hubris train. He and Cat were the main reasons their children have to deal with so much shit. Parents just don't understand.

[Xerxes]

Well if the few people he trusted were just as honorable, Stannis or the bastard would be in poor and Lannisters would be but hurt. Or something like that.

[Bone]

Unfortunately he trusted Cersei with the information that he would be exposing her. Tomorrow.

[Tel Prydain]

Originally Posted by Xerxes

Well if the few people he trusted were just as honorable, Stannis or the bastard would be in poor and Lannisters would be but hurt. Or something like that.

But they aren’t. And having lived as long as he had, he should have known they weren’t.
And if he was going to insist on faffing about, he should have first made sure that the girls were well clear.

The thing that’s important is that he allowed his clouded sense of honour to override his responsibility to his family.

[Vanthar]

Originally Posted by Tel Prydain

But they aren’t. And having lived as long as he had, he should have known they weren’t.
And if he was going to insist on faffing about, he should have first made sure that the girls were well clear.

The thing that’s important is that he allowed his clouded sense of honour to override his responsibility to his family.

Wha?? He ordered the girls home immediately. It wasn't until Sansa pleaded to Cersei to let them stay that she found out. He tried to protect his family first, while maintaining his honor. I'd say he held family above honor as he was willing to admit to something he did not do in hopes that he and his daughters would be spared.

Further, he took a secret to his grave that cost him his honor in the eyes of the realm aka Jon Snow. I think that's another way of protecting family.